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Lancaster honors noted physician

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High Desert Medical Group recently hosted its 25th annual Senior Expo which each year is dedicated to promoting good health and wellbeing for local seniors. This year Dr. Richard Merkin was honored for his decades-long history of advocating for the advancement of medicine and healthcare on all fronts. Because of his efforts, Merkin was awarded the Key to the City of Lancaster by Mayor R. Rex Parris.

“It was impossible for me to pass up this opportunity to acknowledge someone who has had such an incredible impact on not only the health and wellness of our community, but the entire scope of medical research and advancement,” Parris said. “Dr. Richard Merkin is so much more than just an expert in his field; he is a founder of institutes, a financier of programs and an advocate of innovation and education as well as a devotee of children and music. It is my personal honor to present him with the key to the city.”

Merkin’s expertise is in integrated delivery systems. His work in this area has reportedly inspired more than 28 group model experiments and Independent Practice Association structures in California, New York and in Arizona, including the predecessor to the Heritage Provider Network, one of the largest IPAs in the United States. He is the co-founder of FasterCures, an “action think tank”  dedicated to getting new medicines from discovery to patients more quickly, and founded Heritage Medical Research Institute, which is a non-profit medical research corporation. Merkin also provided funds to the Brain and Health Innovation Program at the Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute at USC’s Keck School of Medicine.

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